Striped Orange Jellies

Many people will remember eating sail boats made from jellies set inside oranges and with sails and masts made from rice paper and
toothpicks. Try it: it’s not as complicated as it looks and the results are spectacular. Demonstrated at the 2011 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

First find the right end of the clementine: you want the bit that sticks out a little and has the dark hard bit where it was attached to the tree. Use a small knife to remove a circle of peel about 15mm in diameter. From this, you are going to hollow out the clementine.

2.

Using a small teaspoon, carefully remove the segments from the clementines. Once you’ve got the first segment out, it gets progressively easier. Keep removing the flesh until the clementine is cleanly hollowed out. Don’t worry if you created a small hole in the bottom: this can be fixed. However, it’s important that you don’t rip the side, so careful as you go! Place all of the flesh into a bowl. This will be made into the orange jelly.

Making The ‘Orange’ Jelly:

1.

Pass the clementine flesh through a sieve and into a measuring jug until you have obtained all the juices. Now add sugar syrup and water until you have doubled the liquid in volume. Use the orange jelly recipe above to add the correct quantity of gelatine and get the jelly mixture made up. Keep this in a jug.

2.

Meanwhile, refrigerate the clementine shells to give them a chance to chill. This will make setting the layers quicker.

Making the Blancmange:

1.

Make up an equal quantity of milk jelly, following the instructions for the blancmange earlier. Add a few teaspoons of sugar, just to allow the milk jelly to balance with the flavour of the orange jelly.

2.

You should now have two jugs of jelly on your kitchen counter and a tray of clementines in the refrigerator. Fixing any holes in the clementines.

3.

The next stage is to fix those tiny holes in the bottom of the clementines. We’re going to block them with jelly. To do this, take a few tablespoons of the orange jelly, then put it into a glass and place in the refrigerator. Don’t forget about it. In about 15 minutes, it will have gelled enough so that it can be used to block the holes. You want it lumpy but still just about flowing.

4.

Place a small amount of the orange jelly into any holes that need blocking and place back in the refrigerator until fully set. This will take about 15 minutes.

Setting the Layers:

1.

Once you are watertight, you can get going on the layers. For the first layer, measure 1 dessertspoon of orange jelly and pour it into the clementines. Allow to set. As the layers are thin, this should take no more than 30 minutes. Then follow with 1 tablespoon of the milk jelly and again allow to set.

2.

If any of the jelly in the jugs begins to gel during this process, heat it up gently by immersing in a pan of lukewarm water.

3.

Keep adding alternate layers of jelly until the clementines are full. Try to end with an orange layer.

The Reveal:

1.

To serve, simply slice the clementines top to bottom into quarters to reveal the magical stripes. Eat like half-time oranges.

2.

It is, of course, possible to do this with other flavours, but it does makes to sense to use the juice that you get from the clementines. Mixing the orange juice with some strawberry juice works well, as it increases the colour contrast with the blancmange.